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Released on October 23, 2012. Core i5 or Core i7 Processor. Apple Fusion Drive.

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Mac Mini Dual Drive SSD raid

Hello,

I found different answers or suggestions.

I have a MacMini Late 2011 with 16GB Ram and 1TB hdd.

I use it for transcoding video files with handbrake and tag them with subbler for my plex server.

It is fast due to the quadcore processor and 16gb Ram. Can I speed it up with the dual hard drive kit when I remove the hdd and insert two ssd‘s?

Do they work in a Raid system and if so, could I format the system in APFS and will increase that again the speed for read/write?

Thanks in advance!

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Lets start with hardware side of the question - SSD RAID and Yes your Mac mini can support it.

Your system has two equal SATA III (6.0 Gb/s) ports, and can support two SSD's. RAID'd SSD are as fast this system can go as far as storage access.

Now the hard part... Apple's new file system (APFS) does not support RAID at this time. So you can't run High Sierra the best you can do is Sierra.

Even still you will getting better performance with the GUID/Extended (journaled) file system than what your HDD offered and RAID'ing the SSD will push it to the max.

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2 Comments:

Thanks for the quick answer! I just found an article at the developer site of apple which says, RAID is supported.

https://developer.apple.com/library/cont...

So it is just a matter of time until it is fully supported.

As my main intention is to keep my budget as low as possible would a RAID system even be the best one? Or just simply buy a bigger SSD instead of connecting two over a RAID?

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As I said: stick with Sierra, don't try running High Sierra as the OS will do a file system upgrade magically! And once that happens you can't RAID! Once Apple acknowledges its supported then we'll need to install that version of High Sierra to then gain APFS.

What is the size of SSD you were thinking of going with?

I would do at least a 1 TB RAID'ed. In your case file I/O is important so RAID is better than a single SSD.

I was lucky! I was able to snag two 2 TB SSD drives while I haven't RAID'ed them as my need was for a media server so I have them setup as discreet drives. I was considering setting them up as a contagious JBOD setup up with High Sierra but it doesn't work either unlike Sierra!

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